SURVIVOR

This might be a long post or it might be short. I haven’t actually decided on how this will go. I was inspired to write this because the month of October is dedicated to breast cancer awareness.

Anyways, I just have to start in order to get through it…

Hi, I’m Sheel and I’m a cancer survivor.

I was in 7^th grade when I was diagnosed. My mom noticed that my left eye wasn’t closing all the way through, and she suspected that there might be a growth at the back of my eye which caused concern and she wanted me to get checked out. Obviously, there was some resistance on my part, I was a teenager. In my young mind there were a lot of more important things that I should be doing instead of going to the doctor’s office to get checked out. I was annoyed, a little pissed that I needed to miss school and miss hanging out with my friends for something silly and trivial. Little did I know that this something silly and trivial in my head would snowball into something big and life-changing.

It all happened so fast, if I knew better back then it would’ve made my head spin. The first appointment led to another doctor and led to a scan (I don’t want to get technical with the terms but I got an MRI.) that led to a surgery to test what the growth was. Surprise, surprise, it was cancer (Rhabdomyosarcoma – a type of sarcoma that grows on soft tissues. This type of sarcoma is mostly common on children. Okay, I googled this part but I just wanted y’all to know what kind of cancer it was. 😀).

Grade 7 Graduation Picture - 1 Surgery in

So, okay, I was this 13 year old grade 7 student who was somewhat normal, mediocre teenager who was trying to figure out who I was. Then out of nowhere I was a teenager with cancer who was about to lose her hair because she needed to get chemo (Call me crazy, but this was the thing that freaked me out the most. Sue me, I loved my hair. It was black and thick and silky and shiny. Tbh, I still miss it 14 years later. 🙈). I made a decision to cut my hair short before I started my treatment. I thought it might be easier to lose my long hair over shorter hair. Side note: I actually thought that I would lose all my hair instantly after my first round of chemo but it didn’t happen (I was actually hopeful that I won’t lose it. Haha) until 2 weeks later. The night I lost my hair, things were pretty normal. I was just doing my homework, then I ran my hand to fix my hair, I saw locks of hair and I freaked out. I felt like I couldn’t breathe when I saw that a lot of my hair was there in my hand. I screamed for my mom because I didn’t know what else to do, I was sitting alone in my room and I knew that my mom was the one person who I knew would know what to do or what to say in a time of crisis. I say this now because I’ve processed things, somedays I’m still trying to process the things I went through. But when I was younger I didn’t have a relationship with my mom that I have now. I didn’t know how much support I needed from her. I didn’t know how huge her role in my battle and journey was going to be.

I had no idea how difficult the treatment would be on me, on my body, on my psyche. But I did try my best not to wallow on the bad things, not to get sucked in the darkness. I tried. But I was an angry teenager, I had a lot of angst. I felt alone because I had this thing in my body that I didn’t want. I can’t be a normal teenager. No body truly understood what I was going through. I wanted to know why I was going through what I was going through back then. I was a teenager, I wanted to experience what it was like being a normal teenager. I didn’t want to know what all these drugs did for my body. I didn’t want to be pricked every week. I didn’t want to feel like crap. I didn’t want to feel hot and cold. I wanted to be free of the cancer. It came to a point where I just wanted to stop. I actually told my mom, I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m too tired to do this again. I just wanted it all to stop. That night in the hospital, my mom held me as I cried because I was giving up. And I think that changed something in my head, it wasn’t a conscious shift, but I powered through the treatment and, in the end, survived.

This isn’t the end yet. I don’t want this to end on all the negativity that I felt when I was at my lowest. Remember I said, that I felt alone and nobody really understood what I was going through. My family sympathized with what I was going through. And you have no idea how much I appreciate that now. How grateful I am that I had that system of support to carry me through the whole ordeal of fighting.

Mommy and daddy (my grandparents), would always bring me pizza in the hospital because that’s the only thing that I can keep down. Maybe that’s the reason why pizza is my favorite food, and pizza from Pizza Hut is on my list of my comfort food. But holy crap, to this day, I cannot stand the sight and smell of chicken barbecue pizza (Ugh. Even thinking about it now makes me want to throw up).  I tried to entertain myself even when I was puking my guts by telling my mom and yaya that there are “hidden Mickeys” in my barf. I told you that I tried, right? We brought posters from home to keep the “gloomy” feel of the hospitals away. All the rest of my family provided company. One of my uncles (miss him to this day. 🙏) used to cook sinigang (tamarind soup) or corn soup for me for Sunday lunch after my in-patient treatment. I remember that he made a special batch of sinigang for me because I wanted it to be super sour that I can feel it in my ears. I had a good foundation to hold me strong.

Almost at remission here!!!

Over a year after my first treatment, and 2 eye surgeries, a second relapse, my amazing doctor-tandem decided that the best course of action was to clear the left socket out. Thinking about it now, no muscle, no place the cancer can hold onto. Right? Post-op was a nightmare, cleaning the wound hurt (sorry if this is too graphic 😐). We’re almost done, but I didn’t know this back then. I didn’t know how many rounds of treatment I had left. I was almost 15, and I’m still at it. I still have this stuffed dog that my aunt gave me, who I named patch, because I had one eye left and I had to wear an eye patch, he also has to wear an eyepatch. To this day. He’s my security blanket. (Side note: I took him with me when I, along with my thesis groupmates, were invited to present our thesis at Stanford. I was 23 at the time. But that story is reserved for a different day.)

After my left eye was taken out

There are a lot of side stories that happened when I was going through my battle against cancer. Things that happened after I finished treatment that helped mold me as much as the struggle of fighting has molded me. I just wanted to focus this post mainly on how I came out of cancer stronger. It didn’t happen overnight, I wasn’t strong on my own back then, I got stronger because the strength of the people around me kept me going. I think that is the most important lesson that I learned going through what I went through at such a young age. I resisted, I hated that I need help. But I’m glad that I accepted. I’m grateful that there were a lot of people around me who were willingly helping me get stronger. Get tougher. And end up becoming a survivor.

HOLD STRONG, I’M BATTLE TESTED.

XO

Sheel L.